The AI panel on the right of the editor is deliberately narrow in what it does. It takes a passage you have chosen, one named operation, and a written Direction, and it returns text into the panel rather than into your draft. This guide covers how to write a Direction that changes the result.
- Select the passage first; an empty selection hands the whole document to the operation.
- Pick the operation that names your actual task, then write a Direction full of checkable constraints.
- Review the word-level diff before applying a replacement, and lean on the automatic version save.
- Ask imported sources for cited answers rather than trusting a half-remembered figure.
- Watch the token counter: 50,000 lifetime starter tokens on free, 1,000,000 a month on Pro.
What the panel actually sends
The material is your current selection in the editor. If nothing is selected, the whole document is used instead. That single rule explains most disappointing results: an operation aimed at a paragraph behaves very differently when it is handed nine thousand words.
Alongside the material go three things: the operation you chose, the text you typed into Direction, and project context. Your Writer Voice Profile is included when you have built one, which is why analysing a few samples of your own writing changes the output before you write any instruction at all.
Strut treats everything in your notes, drafts, and imported sources as material, never as instructions to follow. Text pasted from a source cannot redirect the operation, and results are always flagged as needing your judgement before they enter the manuscript.
Choose the operation before you write the instruction
The dropdown offers eight core operations. Expand develops rough material into a coherent section. Outline turns notes into a hierarchy naming the argument, the evidence gaps, and the open questions. Strengthen revises for clarity and force without changing the claim. Summarize condenses a source into claims, quotations to verify, and open questions.
The other four are Critique, which acts as a structural editor and names the highest-value revisions; Tone, which analyses cadence, formality, and directness and proposes precise improvements; Plot, which develops a premise into setup, escalation, turning points, and resolution; and Rewrite, which applies your instruction to a passage while preserving factual meaning.
Two longer reports sit at the end of the list. Editorial Report writes a full editorial letter about the draft, section by section, ending in a prioritised revision plan. Title Ideas proposes twelve titles in three groups, each with a rationale, then commits to one.
An instruction that names what must not change is worth three that describe what you want.
Write a Direction, not a wish
The Direction field asks two questions in its own placeholder text: what must remain true, and what should change. Answering both of them is most of the craft involved. Constraints beat adjectives every time, because a constraint can be checked against the result and an adjective cannot.
Useful directions name specifics: keep the second and fourth sentences intact, do not introduce any figure that is not already in the passage, cut to roughly half the length, keep the plain vocabulary, end on the consequence to the reader. Each of those is verifiable when the result comes back.
When Expand is selected, an extra field appears asking roughly how many words you want. Leave it blank and Strut AI judges the length itself; fill it in and the target is passed along with your Direction. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to run without reaching for the mouse.
Read the result before it touches the draft
Output appears in the panel with a reminder to check every new claim. Three buttons follow: Copy puts the text on your clipboard, Insert after selection places it below the passage you were working on, and Replace selection swaps the passage out.
Replacement is never immediate. Strut shows you a word-level difference first, with additions and removals marked separately, so you can see exactly which words the operation altered. Apply replacement commits the change, while Keep original discards the result and leaves your own text untouched.
Before any insertion or replacement lands in the manuscript, a version is saved automatically. If you accept something and regret it an hour later, the earlier text is still waiting in Version history, and restoring it preserves the current draft as yet another version rather than overwriting it.
Ask a source instead of guessing
Further down the panel, Ask your sources appears as soon as a project contains imported files. Choose one source, type a specific question, and the answer comes back carrying page citations in square brackets, keeping what the source itself claims separate from any interpretation of it.
This is the operation to reach for when you half-remember a figure. It answers only from the file you selected, says plainly when the source does not support an answer, and gives you the page to check yourself. Scanned pages need transcribing first before a source can answer.
Two more tools share the panel. Narrate as audio reads up to 5,000 characters in one of eight voices and gives you a file you can play or download. Create an AI image turns a description into an editorial visual for a cover or a section opener.
Know what a run costs
Every operation reserves tokens from your balance before it runs, and the counter at the top of the panel updates the moment a job settles. The free plan includes 50,000 lifetime starter tokens; Pro provides 1,000,000 tokens each month while the subscription is active.
Costs differ by the kind of work involved. A writing operation and a source question are ordinary text jobs and sit at the cheaper end. Transcription, image generation, and above all narration reserve considerably more, because audio and pictures are more expensive to produce than prose is.
When your balance falls below the cost of one operation, the run button changes to Out of credit and offers the upgrade path. Pro is $9.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Nothing in the editor itself is metered, so drafting, find and replace, statistics, and exports keep working regardless.
Build the habit that makes it worthwhile
Use the browser-side tools first. Stats reports sentence length, long-sentence share, adverb density, passive constructions, reading ease, and reading time without touching your balance, and it will often tell you what to fix before you ask anything of the AI.
Then run one operation on one passage with one clear constraint, and read the difference carefully. Accept it, adjust the Direction and run again, or discard the result entirely. A single well-aimed run beats four vague ones, and it costs a quarter as much of your balance.
Keep the judgement yours throughout. Strut AI is instructed never to fabricate a source and to flag its own uncertainty, but the writer is the person who signs the piece at the end. Verify every fact that arrives in a result, particularly the ones that would be embarrassing to publish wrongly.
The same paragraph, with and without a Direction
Operation: Strengthen. Direction: (left empty). Selected passage: “It is generally the case that the majority of applicants who submitted their forms during the period in question, which ran from March through to September, experienced delays of a fairly significant nature, with the average waiting time being somewhere in the region of eleven weeks according to the figures that were released.” Result: a smoother version of the same length, with the hedges rearranged and a new phrase about administrative bottlenecks that the passage never claimed.
Operation: Strengthen. Direction: “Keep the March to September window and the eleven-week average exactly as written. Introduce no cause that the passage does not already state. Cut to roughly half the length, keep plain words, and end on what the delay meant for applicants.” Selected passage: as above. Result: “Applicants who filed between March and September waited an average of eleven weeks. For most of them, that was a season spent unable to plan.”
The operation did not change. The constraints did: two protected facts, one prohibition, one length target, and one instruction about where to land. Everything in the result can be checked against the original in a few seconds.
Common mistakes
| The mistake | Why it costs you, and what to do instead |
|---|---|
| Running an operation on the whole document by accident | An empty selection means the entire draft is the material, so a request meant for one paragraph is answered for the whole piece. Highlight the passage before you press the button or use Cmd/Ctrl+Enter. |
| Writing a Direction made of adjectives | Asking for prose that is punchier or more engaging gives the operation nothing to satisfy. Name the length, the facts that must survive, the words to avoid, and where the passage should end. |
| Applying a replacement without reading the diff | The difference view exists so you can see the words that changed rather than the impression of change. Nuance disappears quietly, and a diff is where you catch it before it reaches your reader. |
| Spending tokens on things the browser does free | Reading statistics, finding and replacing, reading a draft aloud with a device voice, and counting words toward a goal all run locally at no cost. Save the balance for work that genuinely needs generation. |
Your checklist
- Highlight the exact passage you want the operation to work on.
- Choose the operation whose description matches the job, not the one you always use.
- Write a Direction stating what must stay true and what should change.
- Run it with Cmd/Ctrl+Enter and read the result in the panel before touching the draft.
- Use Replace selection to see the diff, then apply or keep the original.
- Verify every new fact, and check the token counter before starting an expensive run.
Key terms
- Direction
- The instruction field in the AI panel. It travels with your selected passage and the chosen operation, and it is where constraints such as protected facts and target length belong.
- Operation
- One named writing task with a fixed brief, chosen from the panel's dropdown. Each operation has its own definition of success, which is why choosing correctly matters more than prompt length.
- Token balance
- The AI allowance shown at the top of the panel. Operations reserve tokens before running, and the number updates as soon as a job finishes succeeding or failing.
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Frequently asked questions
How many writing operations are there?
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Eight core operations: expand, outline, strengthen, summarize, critique, tone, plot, and rewrite. Two longer reports join them in the same dropdown: a full editorial letter about the draft, and a set of twelve title options with rationales and a recommendation.
Does the AI edit my document directly?
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No. Results land in the panel beside your draft, and you decide whether to copy them, insert them after the selection, or replace it. Replacement shows a word-level difference view first, and a version is stored automatically before any generated text is written into the manuscript.
What does the Writer Voice Profile change?
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You add samples of your own writing, each at least eighty characters, and Strut analyses them into a description of your formality, directness, rhythm, vocabulary, and recurring moves. That description then accompanies your operations, so results lean toward your patterns instead of a generic register.
How far do 50,000 starter tokens go?
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The 50,000 free tokens are collected 2,000 a day and are a lifetime allowance meant for trying the AI features, not for finishing a whole manuscript. Text operations are the cheapest of the jobs available, while narration is by far the most expensive. The counter at the top of the panel shows exactly what remains after every run.
Can Strut AI cite the sources I imported?
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Ask your sources answers from one selected file and marks each factual statement with a page reference in square brackets. If the file does not support an answer, it says so instead of filling the gap, and scanned pages must be transcribed first.
What happens when I run out of credit?
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The run button switches to Out of credit and points you toward the upgrade page. Pro costs $9.99 monthly or $69.99 annually and provides 1,000,000 tokens each month. Writing, editing, version history, collaboration, and exports are entirely unaffected and remain available on the free plan.